Hacker News Reader

Comment by hnzix | Hacker News Reader

> having less and less nuclear weapons

Disarmament didn't work out so well for Ukraine...

Nuclear disarmament wasn't the only reason Russia was able to "annex" Crimea. A massive media blitz convinced many of the civilian population that they were being overrun by revolutionists, thugs, immigrants, etc and that only Russia could save them. I believe it's highly likely Russia would have succeeded even if Ukraine had all of their nuclear weapons in hand. Firing even one at Russia would have resulted in the rest of Ukraine being wiped off the map.

I'm skeptical it would have been a realistic deterrent in this case.

If Russia decides it's time to annex the entire country, on the other hand...

Seriously? Even a remote possibility of having Moscow flattened would have deterred an attack. Remember, it's the leaders who decide to nuke, there's no referendum of the people.

North Korea have tiny, impotent toy nukes and everyone around them are very careful.

The problem was it wasn't an "attack" in the classic "hey we're at war" sense. Russia is pretty good at fostering conflict on its borders without being blatant enough to make nuclear retaliation palatable.

The dynamics change when you have nukes to back your regular forces up.

The Ukraine could have thrown 100% of their conventional forces at the invasion, if they would have had a nuclear threat getting their backs.

As it stood, they could not mobilise because that would a) have left their flanks open because their conventional forces were in such a sad shape and b) going all in with conventional forces would have been an invitation to Russia to counter and crush them - think Russian tanks in Kiev. And it could be spun as a "legal war" and be over until the rest of the world knew how to react.

If on the other hand, you at all times have a bunch of ICBMs in your back pocket, Russian blitz krieg is not in the cards.

On the other hand, imagine what would happen if some of nuclear weapons were based near Donetsk and they would fall into hands of "separatists". Flattened Kyiv? Or imagine an accident (sabotage) with Ukrainian nuclear weapons.

Horrible things, of course.

I imagine exactly such concerns lead to the nuclear disarmament of Ukraine in the first place. After the end of the cold war, there was a frantic chase to secure nuclear warheads across the former Soviet Union. The US and Russia cooperated with this.

I am not saying it was a bad idea to relieve Ukraine of its nuclear arsenal. I am saying that a country that has them can keep a much higher profile in general.

But as for the "fall in to separatis hands" in a situation similar to this... very unlikely.

a) the central government would guard these systems more than anything

b) even if by some chance such weapons would fall into separatists hands, they would have to be very quick to launch - because the Russian allies would sweep in as fast as possible to stop them. And they would want to avoid having separatists control nuclear weapons as much as the central (Kiev) government would. Given the central government would have remaining nukes to respond with, the response would not go to Donetsk (maybe one to make a point), the response would go to Moscow.

And we are not even talking about what other European powers might do avoid a "broken arrow" situation. It's their backyard too.

>>North Korea have tiny, impotent toy nukes and everyone around them are very careful.

What North Korea has is irrelevant. The scary part they have is capability.

Given enough resources, its the equivalent of possessing seeds with highly fertile soil, and having the agricultural know-how.

To me the scary part is the regime's unpredictability combined with the proximity to Seoul. Even without nuclear weapons, someone waking up in a bad mood could result in hundreds of thousands of casualties.

Not with NATO all over the place.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com